Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Flirting With Lysenkoism: The Media and "Gender" Stereotypes

So, a lot of science is crap, and a hell of a lot of science journalism is crap. So there's more than enough crap in play here already. Now add a layer of objections from the left about studies that aren't sufficiently PC and you get...even crappier crap.

The object of TP's ire is a study alleging to show that women prefer men with larger penises. This, we are told, promotes "gender-biased stereotypes." (Note: they mean sex-biased.)

Why is any of this sexist? Well, of course, it isn't. The line used to be that size didn't matter to women. Was that sexist? Of course not. No claim in this vicinity is inherently sexist. Just because you can make up some vague, hand-wavy story about the bad motives some theoretical person might have for wanting to believe claims of this kind, that doesn't make them sexist.

Other studies have apparently drawn similar conclusions...but TP dismisses this important fact by noting that the report in question indicates that the past results“have been disputed as sexist, or scientifically flawed, or both.” This is, apparently, supposed to show that the current study is sexist as well.

Scientific results are sexist only if they aim at proving some conclusion in order to cast one of the sexes in a bad light. There is no indication that this study is sexist, nor any explanation of why the claim that women prefer men with bigger penises might be sexist. If anything, you'd think it'd be guys who'd object...

Look, women either do or do not, on average, prefer dudes with larger junk. Neither of those two options shows anything bad about women. The frantic quest to find sexism everywhere just makes people looks stupid.

Well, to be more precise: it makes them stupid. Then they look stupid because they are stupid.